The Nihon Review - Anime Reviews & Editorials

Synopsis: After an accidental crash landing, a group of aliens known as DearS become stranded on Earth and choose to assimilate with the human race. These physically beautiful extra terrestrials live under a slave and master system, where the slaves only live to please their master. One day, an average teenage boy, Takeya Ikuhara meets an amnesiac DearS girl who voluntarily becomes his slave. Despite believing that DearS are actually evil space aliens planning to take over Earth, Takeya now must live with one who is willing to satisfy his every whim and desire.

It is never good a judge a book by its cover, but for me, the harem genre only evokes negative vibes. While there are always a few unexpected gems among the mountains of coal, I have grown a universal sense of skepticism for the genre. Why you ask? It probably is because of a certain anime known as DearS.

The first ten seconds of the anime, in other words, the intro song, goes something like this: “Touch and feel. Gnaw and taste. Through the Night… I’m your slave.” Now, fan service is not an inherently bad thing, but it should never be the foundation of an anime. The plot and characters should come first… but who am I kidding, DearS doesn’t even have good fan service much less a cohesive plot or likeable characters. All the ecchi consists of light, supposedly comedic, teases that even fail to stimulate or even draw a chuckle. Due to the lackluster animation, the characters don’t even look pretty.

DearS is best described as a massive collection of shallow interactions among the shallow characters. They amuse themselves with ball games, shopping, and making one another look like idiots. Genuine emotions are thrown out the window since all the romantic relationships are based on random melodrama. Like many other male anime character, this show’s protagonist shirks whenever a girl comes after him. His paranoia aside, he never seems to realize that he has hot, voluptuous female as a willing slave.

The harem genre may be largely based on stereotypical females flaunting their quirks, but the show literally mocks the audience intelligence by giving the girls the combined intelligence of a dead rabbit. Had the studio given the cast actual personalities, they may have been likeable, but as far as characters go, you can’t get much shallower than those in DearS.

After watching a comedy, you know something is wrong when you can remember the number of times you laughed. I refuse to believe that this abomination is a romantic comedy; the show utterly fails at both. Go watch virtually anything besides DearS; this one deserves to rot on the shelves.